


in parallel

by chidorinnn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Developing Friendships, Episode: s01e05 Coda, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: It doesn’t hit until after they take back the castle from Sendak, but Pidge could swear that she saw Keith at the Kerberos launch. He was there just as she was, both of them waiting for something they couldn't put into words until the day Shiro fell out of the sky — but she never once thought tolook.
Relationships: Keith & Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 7
Kudos: 88





	in parallel

It doesn’t hit until after they take back the castle from Sendak, but Pidge could swear that she saw Keith at the Kerberos launch.

He’d been there for Shiro, of course – smaller and younger, but somehow _lighter_. It sticks out in her memory because he had been the _only_ person there for Shiro that day – and it’s stupid that she never once connected the dots that Lance’s self-proclaimed, so-called _eternal rival_ could be the same person as that scrawny cadet that Matt had introduced as Shiro’s best friend.

She hasn’t known Keith for that long, but she’s seen that shack in the middle of nowhere that he calls home – small, run down, so far away from anything and everything that it’s a wonder he can still function as a human being. If he’s anything like what she thinks – anything like _her_ – then she knows one thing to be true: he can’t have come out of the whole ordeal with Kerberos unscathed.

* * *

Once, Pidge dreamed of attending the Galaxy Garrison’s academy. She wouldn’t be a pilot like Dad or Shiro, but something closer to Matt: an expert in some specific area of scientific study. An analyst who would be there for _data_ more than _space_ , as she’d piece together the secrets of the universe itself. She grew up on science fictions, on _ET_ and _Star Trek_ and _Guardians of the Galaxy_ ; she’d be the worst kind of traitor to believe that small, imperfect Earth could be the only one in the cosmos graced with _life_. 

It’s not like it’s been that long since that was her dream – a year and some months, tops. But it feels like a whole separate lifetime that had ended the day her mother received that awful, awful phone call and, moments later, the words _pilot error_ and _mission failure_ became synonymous with the Kerberos mission that her father and brother had been so proud of.

But there was a line drawn, then, between _Katie Holt_ and _Pidge Gunderson_. It’s not a line she can ever let herself cross, because if she loses focus for even a second then everything will crumble within her grasp. It’s not something she would ever expect her mother to understand or even sympathize with; it’s not something that she would expect Lance and Hunk to get, let alone Shiro and Allura and Coran.

She was always going to be an engineer – but actual flight was a goal for Katie, and a necessity for Pidge. Not doing this, not being here – it was never an option. The whole world had been content to avert its eyes, pity the poor, grieving family left behind by a father and son rendered undone by the sum of their own ambition. It’s all such _bullshit_ – _pilot error_ , _mission failure_ , that damned Kerberos rescue simulation that Iverson insists on using to test his cadets – but the only tangible outlet for it had been her own will and ambition.

–and then, out of nowhere, Shiro fell out of the sky. And then there was proof – real, tangible proof – that she wasn’t just pulling conspiracy theories out of her ass.

–and now, she’s here.

* * *

Six months ago, Pidge left home with eighty percent less hair, a duffel bag filled with the least feminine clothing she owned and whatever hand-me-downs of Matt’s she could get her hands on, and her father’s wallet stuffed with pilfered photos from family albums and whatever had been tacked onto the walls of Matt’s room.

There are two pictures with Shiro. The first is of the Kerberos crew, all three of them in uniform as they smile proudly at the camera. It’s the same photo that was broadcasted to the world alongside the words _pilot error_ and _mission failure_ – but her mother had kept this photo, despite everything, and that alone makes it significant.

The second is harder to place: slightly blurry, with everyone in the photo caught in some state of half-motion, the camera clearly having gone off well before any of them were ready. Her father is nowhere to be found in this one, but there’s Matt – the only one grinning, with one arm slung around Shiro’s shoulders and the other draped over a man with brown hair and glasses. She’s seen this man before, though she doesn’t know his name – he’d given her one long, appraising look the day she first set foot in the Garrison that spelled out exactly what he thought of _Pidge Gunderson_. “Do what you have to,” he’d said, finally, and though nothing else came out of that conversation, it was all the confirmation she’d needed that he wasn’t going to say a word.

–and off in the corner of this photo, just a little ways away from Shiro, is Keith. He’s smaller and younger here, but somehow _lighter_ – his black dress shirt and red tie fitting right in with Matt, Shiro, and their friend’s cleanly pressed cadet uniforms and graduation regalia. His arms are crossed tightly over his chest, his mouth half-open but his lips curving upward ever so slightly, in something more like a laugh than the smirk she’s come to expect from him. It’s not the most flattering angle – if it were Lance in this photo, making that face, then he’d make sure that it never saw the light of day – but it’s nothing like the Keith she’s come to know, here with Voltron.

 _What happened?_ she wants to ask – but she’d be stupid to not know, at this point. Kerberos happened. _Pilot error_ , _mission failure_ , a whole lifetime ended by the cowardice of men who refused to admit that they didn’t have all the answers.

–he was in that dilapidated old shack in the middle of nowhere, all by himself – waiting for something he couldn’t put into words until the day Shiro fell out of the sky. She was in the Garrison, surrounded by people, even two that had called themselves her friends, and yet paradoxically more alone than she had ever been in her life – also waiting for something she couldn’t put into words until the day Shiro fell out of the sky.

How could she not notice? Why did she never think to _look_?

Without thinking, she goes to him. It’s something that Keith would probably find strange beyond belief because it’s not like they’ve ever _talked_ before, not in the way that friends probably should. Hell, the last time they had a conversation about anything was on her way out of the castle, when she’d been so convinced that she was the only one who still cared about Kerberos that she had to _leave_. (God, what an idiot she was.)

She lingers outside his room for a long moment, the photograph clutched tightly in one hand and the other raised and halted mere inches away from the door. She should knock, show him the photo, explain everything, but the words catch in her throat. She’s never been good at this sort of thing – too awkward to hold a conversation that goes beyond small talk with anyone who’s not Matt or, as of late, Shiro. She can’t do it with Lance and Hunk, so who is she to think that she can do it so easily with Keith?

–but she doesn’t get a choice in the matter, because the door slides open then. Keith stops, his eyebrows raised in something that she knows, objectively, is not judgment, even if the rest of her brain struggles to catch up. “Pidge?” he says. “Is… everything okay?”

She opens her mouth, and then closes it.

_That was you at the Kerberos launch, with Shiro._

_This past year was hell for me, and I’m sorry I didn’t notice that it was hell for you, too._

_Do you think it would’ve been easier, if we knew each other back then?_

His eyes drift downward to the photograph clutched so tightly in her hand that it’s starting to wrinkle, and frowns. “Wait, that’s…” he says faintly, gesturing helplessly to it. “Can I…?”

“Uh…” says Pidge, the first semi-coherent thing to come out of her since this whole nightmare started. She holds up the photograph to him, manages to uncurl her fingers just barely enough for him to pry it from her.

His eyes soften as he looks at it, something that’s not quite a smile driving his shoulders upward. “Oh wow, this is _ancient_ ,” he says. “Where’d you get this?”

She clears her throat. “Uh, Matt was… he…. yeah.”

He gives her an odd look, then – still not quite judgment, but something that leaves her just as uneasy. “Do you… want to come inside?” His voice rasps around the words, his eyes averted in a stubborn refusal to maintain eye contact – and this, she realizes abruptly, is nothing like the arrogance that Lance swears that Keith runs on. This is just… Keith-awkward. A fundamentally different brand from Pidge-awkward, but awkward nonetheless.

She spares him the trouble by stepping around him, inside. This does earn her a frown, but he says nothing as she plonks down at the foot of his bed and he sits heavily on top of the mattress, next to her. “I didn’t know you were friends with my brother,” she says, and winces when it comes out more accusatory than she’d wanted it to.

“ _Friends_ is… pushing it a little, I think,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “He was more Shiro’s friend than mine, so it’s not like I ever really got to know him, like… without Shiro there.”

Pressure blooms behind her eyes, and it’s so _dumb_ – because that would’ve been more than enough for Matt to call Keith _his_ friend. “So you…” she starts, her voice cracking. “So you guys hung out a lot?”

“Me and… Matt?” asks Keith. “No, not really.” He fidgets, crossing and then uncrossing his ankles. “Like I said – it was mostly just me and Shiro. Sometimes Matt and Adam, too.”

–Adam being, clearly, that fourth person in the photograph and the man who’d looked the other way when she’d first arrived at the Garrison as a student. “Adam wasn’t at the Kerberos launch,” she says, too bluntly.

“Yeah, he…” says Keith, haltingly. “You’re better off asking Shiro, I think.” Which, she’s come to learn, means that it’s a story that isn’t his to tell.

She wants him to tell her everything – about how he met Shiro and what made their relationship so significant that he was able to get clearance to come to the Kerberos launch – about how he met Matt, how many times they’d all hung out together before it all fell apart. She wants him to tell her if Adam had at least tried to be there for him, after news of Kerberos broke out, or if he had tried to be there for Adam. She wants him to tell her how he was able to stand it, even for a short while, when everyone around them had called it _pilot error_ and _mission failure_.

“Mom made me see a counselor,” she says. “After… After Kerberos.”

He snorts. “Yeah, Iverson made me do that, too. Not like it did any good, though.”

“Yeah, same,” she retorts, a hysterical laugh bubbling up within her. “ _Unprocessed grief_ , he called it.’

“’Unprocessed,’ my ass.” He turns to look at her, then, something unsteady gleaming in his eyes. “Did you know they came up with a _Kerberos rescue_ sim?”

“Oh yeah, they’re still running that one,” says Pidge. “That’s the last one I did, before all of this.”

“It’s all such _bullshit_.”

“ _Seriously_.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, and more laughter bubbles up – wild and untamed, and something closer to tears than she’ll ever admit to Keith. Maybe nothing would’ve come of it after all – if the day Shiro fell out of the sky had been a fixed point, then there’s nothing either of them could have done, even together, that would’ve made the wait any more productive.

–she’d like to think it would’ve been easier, though. Even if nothing productive came out of it, they would have at least had each other.

“Hey,” he says, knocking his knee into her shoulder. “I was able to download some shapefiles of Galra prison camps, earlier. It’s not like it’s going to narrow it down _that_ much, but we can start with that.”

It takes her a few seconds to catch up – he’s talking about Matt and Dad. He’s talking about it without her having to ask, and the mere thought of it makes warms something inside her that had long run cold. His reasons for it might be entirely selfish, but that they’re in alignment on this makes the ground beneath her feet, all the way up in the stars, feel a little steadier.

… she’s not good at this sort of thing – getting help, or even just asking for it. Neither is he, she’s starting to suspect.

“Well, it’s a start,” she says. Something almost like a smile graces his features, at that, and he knocks his knee into her shoulder again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
